Apocalypse Eventually
by CimentSemantique
Summary: Because Fox is every kind of jerk. You know what happened when the head of Rossum fell off; you just don't know how it happened. Rating and genres may or may not change.
1. Prelude

**A/N and disclaimer: I did not like Epitaph II. It had so much potential, and was consequently so disappointing. I couldn't leave it at that. I do not own Dollhouse, because if I did it would have survived much longer than it did.**

* * *

The ride back to Los Angeles was quiet for most.

Echo – or was it Caroline? – sat patiently in a corner, watching. If the lack of warmth in Paul's gaze wounded her in any way, she said nothing. She only clenched her jaw and stared on.

Adele DeWitt watched Christopher Brink wring his hands, his eyes alternating between wide and squinting, chewing his lip as if he didn't think anyone was looking – which, in all fairness, he wasn't. He was thinking of poor Bennet, her pretty little brains splattered all over her pretty little shoulders and her big pretty eyes open and staring past him into nothing and Whiskey walking down the steps in the distance and Whiskey lying unconscious in the van, wiped but she still killed Bennet and if anyone thought he was going to forgive her for that and let everything be hunky-dory, well, they had another thing coming.

They were going to reload the Saunders imprint into Whiskey. Topher hoped he could manage without trying to strangle her.

Paul Ballard did not love Echo. Those memories were gone. He had no way of knowing if they could come back. Topher did not seem inclined to answer anything at the moment.

Boyd was in several crispy bits not at all anywhere near the van. The desperate hope was that he hadn't backed himself up. He certainly was mad enough to have simply not bothered. And, if that madness _had_ indeed worked to their advantage, the fish's head had been neatly cut off.

* * *

Something about the sunset appealed to the artists in Alpha, alone somewhere in Texas with a tacky hat on his head and a sort of vengeance in his – whatever vengeance is stored in. Next to this vengeance was a strong sense of guilt, because even sociopaths had to admit that killing your love's lover isn't considered a particularly sweet expression of devotion by much of anyone. Some might call it tactless. Some might suggest that flowers might have been a more effective gift than a brain-dead boyfriend. But what _was_ a guy to do?

He was hoping Echo had gotten to Rossum by now. All this sitting and brooding with a silly hat was starting to be a bit much.

So, incidentally, was the camp symbolism of the vultures he saw gathering over something in the distance.


	2. Nocturne

**A/N: Do I really have to deny ownership with every chapter?**

* * *

He had warned her.

He had told her to go. Had told her not to become him. Had, with a desperate, manic glint in his eye, covered in Bennet's blood, showed more humanity in that instant than ever she had seen him display. She knew what he wanted, but all she could think of was the horrified Topher and how quickly he dissolved under pressure, and how this was certainly a pressuring situation.

When she said she would help against Rossum, she had meant it. It wasn't as if she had strolled into DeWitt's office for the sake of being there. She didn't know what the plan was, but she agreed with the principle and that was enough.

The negligible amount of time it took for Rossum's goons to catch her had not factored into her decision at all. And now, she was bound and blindfolded in the back of a vehicle without the slightest idea of where she was going or why she wasn't at home, warm and drowsy and completely un-bothered.

Ivy wondered how quickly she would be forgotten.

* * *

"I hope none of you is thinking that this is actually over."

DeWitt Killjoy nursed her glass of scotch, thinking too many dark thoughts to keep quiet about them. The others assembled in the room, too tired to groan, looked at her with faces displaying a wide range of emotion. Some eyes narrowed; some bugged out in a way which, translated to English, said, _What? What did she say? Is she serious? She can't be serious. Tell me she's not serious!_

Adele was deadly serious, and god only knew how much she wished she were making a bad joke. There were too many Houses around the world, and, if Echo's visit to the Attic had been any indication, they were all connected. If even _one_ of those Houses had had access to what she had given to Harding in exchange for her own House, the tech could spread everywhere and there was nothing they could do to stop the bloody thing.

This fact rejoiced absolutely no one, least of all Topher, who was filled with a sudden inexplicable urge to wander the empty House. Calling after him, Adele followed him out, leaving behind her a morose silence.

* * *

Didn't have to go. Could have stayed. Could have gone straight home. Could have told Topher, bugger your sudden moral streak, y'all need help. Could have avoided being kidnapped by a bunch of crazies and stuffed in a cell where it was cold and wet and dark and she really missed being Topher's gofer and she could gofer a drink right about now and bad puns mean no more ranting.

* * *

Topher was sitting unnervingly quietly in Bennet's chair, observing the lobby of the House and seeing all the dead bodies all over again. It wasn't that he was an intensely moral person; he worked programming people's personalities in an upscale _film noir_ brothel. It was just that… you know, not everyone's comfortable with death. You can spend your entire day plugging new brains into dollies but you didn't ever have to kill anyone. And, hey, it wasn't as if it was a total death of personality, since the dolls were released at the end of their contracts with their original personalities and memories. And he never did the really dirty work, or had to clean up – that was what the dolls and their handlers were for. But this… this… well, it wasn't as if he hadn't seen it coming, since he was after all a genius, but… stupid, stupid, stupid… and DeWitt with her… plans… scheming… machinations… sneaky little…

"Topher?"

Well, speak of the she-devils.

"Do we still have the Dr. Saunders imprint somewhere?"

He stared past them a while – DeWitt and Whiskey, lingering in the doorway as if they knew – _because_ they knew – they had done something wrong. And Whiskey, with that stupid blank doll look on her face. She couldn't help what she did. She'd been programmed to do it. He couldn't hold it against her.

"Topher?"

Startled now. Adele never was one for waiting. "Er… um… Saunders' imprint. Yeah. Yeah, I guess we still have it. Just let me go… go find it…"

They followed him to the back room. A little stifling. Genius needed space. Or maybe he didn't; genius, given enough space, could very well come up with another deadly tech that could potentially bring down all of humanity and DeWitt's declaration that it wasn't over was certainly not helping, no sir, and why did she keep watching him like that?

"Doctor… ah, yes. Here we go. Doctor Saunders. Good as pretty much new."

"Excellent. Whiskey, are you ready for your treatment?"

The doll's face lit up with that dull glow all dolls had at the prospect of a treatment. "I always enjoy my treatments."

_Of course you do_, thought Topher, busying himself with plugging in the wedge.

Whiskey settled herself in the chair and, as Topher passed to turn on the machine, smiled. "I try to be my best."

Topher forced a smile, though it came out more like the face people made when they stubbed their toes. "I know."

He probably pressed the button a little too forcefully, but the blue light was the same as it had ever been. He just hated it more.

* * *

"A couple months ago, Alpha infiltrated the LA Dollhouse."

"Again and to no one's surprise."

"Quiet. He set a virus loose in the dolls' programming. Made them a little…"

"Twitchy?"

"Rampaging-murderous-bloodthirsty killing machines."

"And?"

"And, don't you think that'd be an awful useful virus to have access to?"

* * *

Sunrise over the desert. Alpha sneezed. People really had to stop sending assassins after him. It was almost as if he had something they wanted.


	3. Recoil

**A/N: Guess what isn't mine. Also, Ivy's name is Filipino, as I am convinced somehow that the actress has some Filipino ancestry. I must have read it somewhere.**

* * *

Bennet, having lowered the curtain and joined the choir invisible, had not left her branch empty-handed. It wasn't as if she'd expected on cooperating with LA initially; she had, clever as she was, set provisions.

She had, most notably, left behind access to the LA security codes.

"The only thing left to do is crack them."

* * *

Topher's thoughts were straying towards admiring what the lack of zombies could do to an underground lair. Sure, it was still so far removed from natural sunlight that he forgot what it felt like sometimes, and, sure, they had shut off the artificial light when they had released the dolls, but the lobby now lacked the weight that accompanied all the _Try to be my best_s and the _Always enjoy my treatments_s. Even the presence of Saunders, restored and incredibly worried about the entire affair and still unwilling to go anywhere near Topher, could not spoil the beautiful feeling of an empty house.

Echo was less interested in admiring the emptiness, and was more focused on a great deal of things, none of them jovial. Some part of her knew, from what she had seen, that there was no way one of Rossum's higher-ups didn't have a Plan B – after all, Clyde Randolph had been imprinted, copied, and laminated for minionation, and damned if there weren't other copies somewhere. Imprints always had a hardcopy.

Another thought, taking precedence over her anarchist tendencies (since at least one of the Clyde 2.0s had been removed and Boyd was… disposed of), was how best to pummel Alpha the next time he showed his smarmy face anywhere near her. Despite the many serene personalities running around her head insisting that she stay calm, the look on Paul's face closed the deal definitively: some sumbitch was going to get the psychotic shit beaten out of him.

* * *

Ivy was cold.

Never mind that she could see nothing and hurt all over; she hated being cold. It had that slippery feeling to it, like a snake – it felt wet, but it wasn't, and it was extremely unpleasant. She couldn't understand her fixation on the coldness, but was inclined to blame it on the overwhelming nature of her situation.

Speaking of which, she could hear the nervous creaking of an opening door, and incredibly unfriendly footsteps. Someone grabbed her arm roughly (these people had no sense of hospitality) and guided her to a room with significantly more light than the previous room, where she was plopped unceremoniously onto a chair. Upon removal of her blindfold, she noticed she was in a room that reminded her uncomfortably of the DC House. In the room with her were a couple of deceptively bored-looking guards, and a walrus. Well, not quite a walrus, but everyone knows the type – small, piggy eyes of indeterminate color (though they were probably an utterly uninteresting shade of blue), thin hair (also color-deprived, but probably not blue), blubbery with a hint of yellow coloring, wearing a suit too small for him, but gifted with an irritatingly sharp mind and a nasty disposition to rival that of the fat amphibious mammal. And, to Ivy's horror and disgust, the walrus was smiling. Swallowing fear and oh-dear-god-what-is-that, she managed to growl a, "Who are you?" followed by a "Where am I?" and a "What do you want from me?"

The walrus, still smiling, offered her a cup of tea.

* * *

No longer in Texas, Alpha sat at an obscure diner by a highway in Arizona, reading a newspaper that had taken it upon itself to trumpet an unfortunate explosion in Tucson. The premier authority in medical advances, the poor dear Rossum corporation, had been the victim of what the twitchy paper was calling a terrorist attack.

"That's my girl," Alpha smirked into his coffee.

The waitress raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing and was awarded with a winning smile. She was really very pretty. But whatever plan he may or may not have had for her, it would have to be put off, because hark, lo, and behold, there was a suspicious van coming down the road, and if it wasn't filled with more Rossum puppies playing Fetch-The-Alpha, then the fine lunatic in question was a monkey's third cousin twice removed.

He had to give them points for resilience, though. Maybe he should have mounted the last ones' heads on a post or something.

* * *

Cookies may be poisoned and fatal. No cookies looked that good without being fatal. And that walrus was _still smiling._

"Your name is Ivy Malagar."

Ivy almost started, but continued to stare at her tea – not quite as disdained as the cookies, but more or less untouched and reaching that abominable lukewarm temperature untouched tea tends to reach. Walrus continued, "You worked under Topher Brink at the Los Angeles Dollhouse for ten months before he released you three days ago for reasons best known to Mister Brink himself."

Ivy summoned up the courage to glare at Walrus, who retained a sense of innocence regarding what could have _possibly_ made poor little Topher snap.

"My name is Matthew Harding. We've met before, but I was considerably… different."

Walrus-Harding lit up a cigar and smiled his yellow smile. "We would like you do to something for us."  


* * *

Rossum could very well have underlings out to get them. Another Ambrose, somewhere, could perhaps have a plan to destroy them. Maybe send a few more commandos to shoot at them. They would come in through the ceiling and they would start slaughtering, and messes would be made and would have to be cleaned up and…

Point is, no one was expecting anyone to come in through the staircase.

To be fair, no one had been expecting to be alive to deal with a bunch of angry dolls released before the end of their contract.

And, as Paul's nose could affirm by its painful collision with a particularly velocious fist, the early release was sitting far from well with certain dolls.


	4. Fans

**A/N: I'M REALLY REALLY SORRY.**** First there were exams, and then there was writer's block. Even this chapter feels kind of forced. Trying to find some sort of direction. Sigh. Also, still not mine.**

**

* * *

**A murderous frown marred the pretty waitress's face as she admitted to the Rossum puppy that she had no idea where the strange man had gone. He had, however, left without paying, and if she ever caught him around these parts again she would express her displeasure most thoroughly.

In the back, a skinhead – what he was doing so far from home even he couldn't say – wandered out of the surprisingly clean toilet to not find his bike. As he swore under his breath, Alpha, secure in his cleverness, sped as fast as he could down the highway. He hadn't been counting on Rossum taking the entire diner hostage, but as the shrill cry of a woman caught up with him, it occurred to him that Rossum had given up on the kid gloves.

They couldn't possibly be expecting him to turn this bike around.

Andrew Matheson had signed onto the Dollhouse three weeks ago. His contract was quite explicit: five years as a Charlie the zombie, during which time he would probably do things he wouldn't want to know about. He would not be informed of these things, and he would not be released before the expiration of the contract.

"So would someone tell me," he barked at Adele, who was at the moment more worried about when Echo was going to smack Mister Matheson than Mister Matheson himself, "Why it took y'all three weeks to kick me out?"

With a sudden turn to pleading, he dropped the tattletale newspaper he had been brandishing to his side. "Did I do something wrong? Did you find something wrong with me?"

Someone wasn't keen on going back to the world of the living quite yet. Adele took a deep breath and realized that, among all the panic and the certainty of death, she was totally unprepared for the return of angry dolls. Fortunately, Paul seemed to benefit intellectually from a broken nose, and interceded: "We had an emergency. Had to release everyone before lots of shit hit this fan that'd been running too long."

Matheson relocated his eyebrows to his hairline and looked entirely unconvinced. Adele saw an opening and, hurried, said, "It was a temporary situation. We're more than ready to take you back in."

Paul and Echo looked at Adele as if she had taken leave of her marbles, and mouthed words of confusion and resentment as Matheson was shown the way to Topher's lab. Adele, composure swiftly regained, looked down and forced a smile.

"Better they be here, safe, than out there."

* * *

Ivy looked at the paper in front of her with a growing alarm, though months of Topher had taught her to keep such feelings hidden. The program Alpha had used to turn the dolls into raging savages the last time he infiltrated the dollhouse was still somewhere in the database, and someone wanted to use it.

"And what purpose, exactly," she managed to gurgle, "would this serve?"

There was a pause from Harding as he finished his biscuit and blew some extremely inconsiderate smoke into Ivy's face. "What use does anyone have for a violent and mindless army of men and women – men and women who know no taboo, acknowledge no limits, even of themselves?"

Of the myriad of semi-clever responses she could have provided, Ivy elected to remain silent. The idea was so evident, so clichéd; it didn't even bear saying. Harding knew what was going on in Ivy's head, and purred contentedly, "That's right."

"And if I refuse?"

The man really had a horrifyingly ugly smile.

* * *

Dear god, what was it with pretty women and screaming?

What was it with bikers and demanding to have their bikes back?

What was it with dead bodies leave such a mess?

And what was it with bullet wounds hurting so gorram much?

Alpha pressed his hand to his heroically bleeding side, staring furiously at the counter he was leaning on for support. He had a doctor somewhere in his head; he probably wouldn't just up and die of the shot, though it was recommended he treat it quickly. And if these people would just _shut up so he could hear himselves think_, he would be eternally grateful. Well, maybe not eternally. Eternally is a terribly long time, and besides he had just risked his neck to save everyone in the diner. Wasn't that enough? Couldn't he just fumble along his way? What had inspired him to—to—

Darkness nibbled at the corners of his vision as he noticed another van speeding towards them, still far down the highway, interrupting what was promising to be a brilliant existentialist crisis. Needed to think of something fast…

* * *

Lima had pretty eyes, but a horrible temperament, even as an active. As her own person, she was…

"And why are you looking at me like that? Stop looking at me like that! I want to know why I'm back on the streets again, after two years, with a fucked economy and no roof over my head! I don't know what made you think you could get away with just kicking me out like that, but you're all damn lucky I didn't report your House!"

"Who would you report us to?" Topher was tired. Not exhausted, not drawn like a piece of taffy or pressed like a lemon. Just… tired. Done.

"I—to—ah."

They were still coming in – the House had, in the span of a few hours, been almost completely repopulated, as if they had all planned together to mob it the moment people were back in it. Paul and Echo were doing their best to stem the flow.

DeWitt was wondering why the hell she couldn't reach Ivy – and, more importantly, why her parents had called, wondering why the hell they couldn't reach Ivy.

The dolls weren't all that worried.

* * *

Somewhere in Arizona, a diner exploded.


	5. 28

**A/N: Would you believe me if I apologized for writing so slowly? I do not own Dollhouse. I've spent the last couple of months trying to appropriate it, but all is vanity.**

* * *

Deserts were hot. Deserts were sunny. Deserts were in the middle of frakking nowhere.

He had heard through certain channels of dubious morality that a certain assistant programmer to the Los Angeles House had gone missing a few months ago, and now Alpha glanced almost uneasily at what must have, at some point, been Ivy Malagar. She was, unfortunately for everyone including her and excepting, perhaps, Alpha, not dead yet, and now lay tired and dehydrated in the passenger seat of the latest car to be stolen by the renegade doll. She had barely stirred when he had reached out and brushed her shoulder; after a pained gulp of water she had opened a bleary eye, surveyed the blond, and whispered a ghost of a lament about her evident eternal damnation.

In the past half-year, the underworld had dissolved into a complete clustercuss. Rossum had been doing… terrible, horrible, vague, and unformulated things. People disappearing – of whom Ivy was only a miserable first – and reappearing in the most ghastly of conditions, a term which in most societies implies dead and which in others implies putrefied. The number of homeless people was on the rise, as were violent crimes – and Alpha, with his berserker program, almost felt bad.

Almost.

He had no doubt Ivy would, once rehabilitated, would push that almost into oblivion.

* * *

And in Los Angeles, it was not DeWitt who put her foot down. Nor was it Echo, nor even Paul. It was Priya. The gentlest, calmest of the lot, after months of festering and planning and hiding, one day stood up and announced that she had had it up to her eyeballs of this shit.

"_Look at them!_" she had hissed to Tony, glaring through her elegant eyes at a passing Active, which smiled at her as it sauntered by, "They have nothing! They are nothing! We are deluding ourselves if we honestly believe there is any way to keep them safe in this state. We are insane if we think that Rossum has no way to and no interest in finding us and crucifying everyone to the last doll."

If there had been anything more to her rant, it was cut off as her world exploded into pain and light. Tony was by her more quickly than the contents of a broken thermometer.

"Priya?"

It took her a while to blink away the stars, but eventually she mustered the strength to look him in the eye and make a weakly sardonic remark about a giant Advil and her requisition thereof.

The infirmary was more of a comfort in its care than a tangible help. Everyone had been getting gradually worse headaches over the course of the past many, many weeks, but Priya's had just eclipsed the rough effect of the sum of every single previous one. Topher and Saunders stood together, not without some prevailing uneasiness, and puzzled. And puzzled. And were beginning to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that there was a perfectly logical explanation for the pain, and a perfectly effective way of eliminating it.

* * *

"What do you mean, she's escaped?"

Angry the Walrus paced in his room, fuming down the length of his cigar at a miserable underling, who could barely muster the assertiveness to shrug. Ivy had disappeared overnight, without a trace, leaving a (mercifully) almost-completed hacking of the DC House's mainframe. Bennet had been good, but Ivy had been scared, and damned if Harding didn't have someone with the meager competence to hack the rest.

Help had come too late. And Paul Ballard, with increasing agitation underneath his incognito, had no idea how to extricate himself.

* * *

The fourth zombie since Monday. Echo was sick of them, with their blank, glassy eyes and their demure, glossy expressions. And they kept coming – wandering the alleys, sitting idly on their porches (like a quiet rural town, but with much less charm), staring off into a nameless space.

"We've stopped naming them."

Topher looked up from a pile of paperwork he had been judiciously looking past, frowning. "You want to take the time to name every single Wipie that comes in here? Echo, we're going on forty and there are only so many letters in the alphabet."

She turned to face him with a strangely familiar vacant stare.

"We have to do something."

And winced.

"We probably have to do something about that, too," muttered Topher, scribbling.

* * *

Ivy stirred in a bed in a hotel in Oklahoma. It was grungy, but it was not the floor of her cell. It was strange, but no one was pointing any sort of weapon at her. She felt marginally better than she had been feeling for the past few weeks; she almost felt compelled to stand, to walk, to run, to publicize her unexpected freedom. Today had the potential to be something other than an unhappy day. Until, of course, she remembered those few moments in the desert, and noticed the other person in the room with her.

His hand was over her mouth before she could properly scream, and she found herself, rather than slashed to bits, being handed a cup of tea.

"Now, if you promise not to go straining those pretty little vocal chords, I'll see what I can do about getting you home."

Ivy stared. Alpha removed his hand and nudged forward the cup of tea. "Do we have a deal?"

Ivy fainted.


	6. Fragments

**A/N: Dollhouse i'n't mine. It's short and it's late and I'm sorry but I don't think you believe me.**

* * *

_Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 15:40 DST_

_ There have been a dramatically increased number of sightings of the infected in the past month. The disease, which medical specialists have speculated to be anything from an as-yet-unknown strain of rabies to mass psychosis caused by undetermined pollutants, has been spreading at an alarmingly random rate. Reports from all over the country have determined the source of the affliction to be somewhere in the southwestern United States._

_ Rossum Corporation, the leading biomedical engineering company, has dedicated its time and manpower to the suppression of the plague, though has made no tangible progress yet.

* * *

_

_Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 08:31 DST_

_ Reports of infection, previously limited to the Americas, have come in from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Oceania so far remains unaffected.

* * *

Sunday, September 12th, 2010 03:54 DST_

_ Rioting in Sydney earlier today; cause undetermined._

_

* * *

Sunday, September 12th, 2010 08:12 DST_

_ Confirmed: Rioting in Australia and New Zealand attributed to what scientists are now calling the "Z-Virus."_

* * *

"Momma," Kate whimpered into her battered mobile, free hand clutching a baseball bat, "I'm scared."

"I am, too, Katie. I am, too."

An hour later Kate was incoherently swinging her bat like a madwoman in the streets.

* * *

"I'm pissed," Echo hissed.

"As are we all, Echo," countered DeWitt through gritted teeth, "But if that idea were any worse, it would involve atom bombs."

Topher chewed his lip.

One hundred twelve.

"The House can't take much more," he interjected, more shyly than he would have a year ago. "We're past max capacity, and the only reason we haven't been called on it yet is that most of the fire marshals are either here or…"

A crash resounded from the sidewalk.

"…out there."

* * *

"This is out of our hands, sir!" Paul snapped, close on Walrus' heels.

"It's out of _your_ hands, Mister Everett. _I_ am fully aware of what I am doing," the Walrus slurred back, mouth full of cake.

* * *

"This is horrible!"

"Don't be cruel. It's not my first choice for a vacation home, but it has a certain folksy charm to it."

Ivy looked up, wide-eyed, from the newspaper (from some odd town somewhere along the coast in Maine) she was clutching. "_How can you say that? _Don't you care at all?"

Blue eyes glittered with a coldness rivaled only by the ocean. "Well, of course! How silly of me. We, panicking together, could accomplish _so much more_ than if at least one of us kept a cool head."

Pause.

"Would you like a hat? I stole a few back in the market."

* * *

Topher threw up his hands, earning an odd glance from Dr. Saunders.

"Two hundred."

* * *

_Friday, October 15th, 2010_

_ A bizarre and sudden drop in sightings of infected has been reported. On the other hand, the number of people checking into hospitals and police stations has skyrocketed overnight. Complaints are being made of amnesia and being states away from home in the U.S. Other countries are reporting similar phenomena.  


* * *

_

_ Wednesday, October 20th, 2010_

_ Has the madness stopped?_

_ Reports of infected are now at almost zero percent. Has Rossum found a cure?

* * *

_

* * *

"Mr. Ballard?"

Forgetting himself for a crucial moment, Paul looked up into the latest face of Harding, which broke out into the sickliest of smiles.

Cure.


End file.
